G-LAND but for these days it should be written as O' G-LAND (the other side) ... We'd been planning a recon trip over to the East Cape of Alas Purwo for a little while and it finally materialized. We gathered a large crew of 19 including myself, everyone seemingly excited for the mini adventure to come. The only one's to have been there before were Bobby, Dave, and Wahyu (a wildlife biologist from the head office in Banyuwangi).
We loaded up the Wanasari 4, our Grajagan boat that's been on stand-by here for over a month at 9 AM and bolted directly over in 40 minutes, covering the 40 kilometer run in ultra smooth water and beautiful views of the coast the entire way. Dave guided us in through the reef pass and along the lagoon waterway to our camp for the night. Ultra-fine river sand, not the coral sands that we got here in front of the G-Land camp put their brakes on our stern as we beached the boat and stepped off into a lowland jungle wilderness. It's strange to write that as if G-Land's not wild, but all things become relative and even though a few fishing boats floated off in the distance, it just had that feeling to me; wild and untouched. Imagine coming into Pantai Plengkung (e.g. G-Land) with the feeling that you're about to enter a town. That's the contrast the East Cape impressed upon me. Even just going around to the South Coast give me the same feeling.
Once we decided on where camp was gonna be, the boys started to clear and set up a shade. We lounged, had some coffee, naturally cigarettes were lit up, and then we all slowly broke apart to go explore the area. Ferdi and I went for a walk to the north, checking out 2 river-mouths for footprints and whatever else we'd come across. After about 3 hours of exploring, we'd seen 2 sets of leopard tracks, black-tip reef sharks mating about 30 feet off the beach in the shallows, a section of reef that had the potential to turn a kilometer long right-hander along a decently-formed stretch of limestone, strange glossy-surfaced black rocks that turned out to be anthracite coal (i'd never seen coal like this), and sunburned faces.
The others in the crew started to make their way in our direction and with poles and hand-spears ready to use, they went out into the lagoon and onto the low-tide fringe of reef in search of dinner. Captain Ropik latched onto 6 fish, all trevally's and in under 30 minutes. He was amazingly lucky, bringing in 2 blue-fins, 3 young GT's, and 1 proper GT that had begun its black tinting. Actually, we were all lucky since his luck was naturally reaped by us. Ferdi and I went back to camp to rehydrate, the sun being so intense and almost suffocating. The heat was something more than normal.
As Ferdi and I dove into the shade after filling up with plenty of water, Bobby, Ketut, and Buzy slowly motored the dingy onto the beach and unloaded 4 snapper-looking fish (they called em 'Shitty' no joke) and a bag full of squid. Bobby's taken on some notoriety amongst the boys as a fishing maniac. Example given, they just trolled for 40 km., guaranteed in a serpentine path all over the place, doing this right through midday, only to come to camp, drop off a load and go right back out. I had re-hydrated and decided to hitch a ride out to the fringe reef and chance a dive. There's an old WWII shipwreck corralled up on the reef-passes northern side. So that makes it at least 65 years old. Plenty of fish but i wasn't gonna shot anything unless it was very different than the 5 trevally's on the beach (5 not 6 since 1 was already sashimi'd up and open-fire cooked on the beach). When Bobby showed up and ready to go back out, i pulled together my gear but fiugred out pretty quickly that one of the boy's swiped my snorkle. So during my 2 kilometer r/t run to get it, i got treated to a half-way pit stop to a freshly cooked blue-fin trevally. The boys were stylin' on the beach, hanging in a small puff of shade from a larger-than-normal shrub on the beachline.
Dinnertime went off in style, fresh fish and rice. Not much more was needed to satisfy the crew. Only a coffee and a clove to polish it off. We all hung on the high-side of a wave-formed embankment of sand, talking story and slowly waiting for the moon to rise up over Bali. Wahyu and a few of us went to set up his infrared camera trap in the nearest rivermouth about 800 meters away. He's working with a Cat Specialist from Copenhagen, Denmark to see if the thought-to-be-believed extint Javan Fishing Cat is in fact not. Set up complete and back to camp. We did 2 more checks that night to see what our bait of fish guts and gills would attract. 30 minutes after our initial set-up came back with a hit. Nothing more for the rest of the night except for our mugs from checking out the infrared lights and accidentally setting it off.
We watched an amazing moonrise that slowly lit up the sky and then a nice rain front that we all watched with hopes of a bypass. It skimmed us, but what the front really did was suck all the wind back into it and made the night temp rise up another 2 levels. Eventually we all passed out and when the new day came, we just lounged until the tide rose up enough to let us out and back to camp. Like i wrote before, it was like coming back into the city....
--MICHAEL
dead east and holding
a few of the crew... L2R: Captain Nur, Jahe, Hendra, Captain Ropik, Matty
this is one of the more refreshing views i've seen in a while
what would be a G-Land sunrise becomes an O' G-Land sunset
viper's are described as "lightning fast"
feeling very thankful on this moonrise moment
Panthera pardus...
